Blog

29-Jul-2012 Lager And Larger

The sun shone, the rain rained, and the week flew by before we’d even noticed.

We only ventured out for two performances this week – both on the same day. The afternoon was a return visit to a care home in Sunderland where we all had fun, not only with the music but also being plied with lager and chocolate… the evening was a visit to a local open mic night only half a mile down the road where we threw ourselves into the (sometimes rowdy, always loud) melee of an eclectic mix of genres and performers – everything from gentle acapella to ear-splitting strumming and blues harp competing to leave our hearing damaged for the next few days.

Luckily we’d already done our re-recording of ‘Lately’ (the newest self-penned song to emerge from the Blue Room). Following on from our ‘Big Floppy Hats’ recording, Val has yet again taken to U-Bass and we’ve both added additional vocals – there’s even a hint of Val tickling the ivories on Roland piano… you need to listen right through to catch it. The result can be found on SoundCloud:

There’s also another song (not jiva penned) that is bubbling along with a very distinctive bass line – no, we’re not telling… you’ll just have to wait. [Clue: A much covered song from a local band with a history stretching back over 40 years.]

Good news on the instruments front:

Missy (Jimmy’s Taylor 855 12-string) is back home with new pickup and adjusted action

Baz (Val’s U-Bass) has a strap pin strategically placed to make for more comfortable playing

Thanks to good pal and expert luthier, Mark Challinor, for all of the above.

And implements, too, have featured this week:

We’ve invested in a Korg Pitchblack tuner for the U-Bass (headstock clip-on tuners don’t work well with Baz)

Jimmy has a new mobile phone – Samsung Galaxy Note with a whopping 5.3″ screen! (Val is now the keeper of the 4.3″ Samsung Galaxy S2)

We’ve at last had our hands on a Google Nexus 7 tablet (Currys / PC World at Silverlink) and are very much impressed. So it’s now high up in the shopping list as birthdays, wedding anniversary and Christmas approach.

Our next few scheduled appearances are shown below... details of these, and later gigs, are on our Gig List page. Additionally, we regularly pop in to residents nights and singarounds to do the occasional floor spot.